


thrillseekers

by delizeita



Category: Dying Light (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ass-Kicking, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Humor, Problem Solving With Violence, Team as Family, Timeline What Timeline, Unconventional Families, Zombie Apocalypse, badassery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:12:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26646565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delizeita/pseuds/delizeita
Summary: It all started when Brecken dropped an elevator on a lone Biter for no real reason other than spite.That was only the beginning.There is a lack of entertainment in post-apocalypse Harran, but there are plenty of zombies.In which Crane ends up joining the Tower's version of an exclusive poker club (but with no poker and more murder), Jade revels in the power of pianos, Rahim likes grenade launchers, and Brecken is scarily good at putting ordinary household appliances to unorthodox uses.
Kudos: 23





	thrillseekers

After wiping as much crusted blood and dirt off his boots as he could, Crane headed to the Tower headquarters on floor 20 to report the day's happenings. The ambient light filling the tower's hallways slowly faded as the sun set, but he gave it no mind as he passed the guard outside the meeting room.

It appeared that he was one of the last to enter as the rest of the runners were already standing around the centre of the room, chatting. Rahim was fiddling with something in the corner, and he couldn't see Jade anywhere.

Crane doesn't slow his pace as he strides in, attracting their attention.

One of the other runners, a well-built guy with darker skin and a goatee nicknamed Buckshot, welcomed him in with a hard pat on the back. "Someone looks happy today." Crane gave him a satisfied grin and dumped his backpack by the door before joining the circle.

"What did you do this time, Crane?" Brecken called from across the room. "You look like the cat that ate the canary."

He smirked at him with a proud grin before clearing his throat for no other reason than to add suspense. He liked being dramatic at times, sue him. "I dropped a drying machine on a Viral this afternoon. Blighter never saw it coming."

"Amateur." Jade's voice came from behind him.

Crane spun on his heel and glared at her. She angled a smug grin in his direction. "Try shoving a Biter in a working one instead. They turn to mush before exploding if you make it go fast enough. I've found it's very satisfying to watch."

Crane wasn't sure if she was trying to provoke him or not, but it was working. He had done some admittedly pretty cool kills, but damn, that took the cake. He's got to try that if he ever finds another working drying machine in this hellhole. Not that he's ever going to admit that to her.

He crossed his arms, searching his memory for other admittedly awesome kills to use as a comeback. "Well, I find that the usage of elevators in general for Infected-killing purposes are even more satisfying." he replied, cocking his head to one side, gaze challenging.

Rahim raised an eyebrow at this and Brecken smirked at them from across the room. Nodding at Brecken, Jade moved to his side, looking at him with an indecipherable glint in her eyes that looked suspiciously like schadenfreude.

"Well," she started, "he's passed. Welcome to the club." She looked almost gleeful at this announcement.

Feeling more than slightly apprehensive, Crane felt it was necessary to ask, "A club for what exactly?" He was pretty sure he wouldn't like where this was going, given the looks on their faces.

Brecken had come up beside him, still smirking. Crane wished he could punch the smug look off his face with increasing fervour. "Giving those undying shitstains what they deserve."

"You mean decapitation? I thought we were doing that already?" Crane asked, slightly hopeful that he wasn't being introduced into some evil underground Tower cult that worshipped Volatiles or something else just as crazy. Being a member of the GRE was enough for him.

Brecken gave a deep guffaw. "Ha! Close, but no dice. Cosmic retribution by petty humour, more like."

Crane narrowed his eyes. "I feel like I'm being inducted into some sort of cult. Like, a really shady one." Jade was wearing an overly innocent-looking expression beside him. Crane doubted she was up to anything good, with that look on her face.

"Think of it more like an exclusive poker club for runners, but with no poker and more murder." Rahim piped up from the desk.

"Thanks, kid," Crane drawled. "Really cleared up all my confusion, what a great explanation."

\-----

"So," he started, "long story short, this is basically a club for killing Infected in petty ways."

"Exactly. Spite is a very powerful motivator." Jade nodded in affirmation.

It was a Wednesday night, and the majority of the Tower's runners were gathered in room 190, sitting on spindly little camp chairs in a circle. Including him, there were seven of them altogether. It was nearly midnight, and Crane was honestly too tired to deal with this. Why midnight of all times for the meeting? Because Spike insisted it was cooler and 'more secretive'.

Crane knew all the occupants of the room from his traipsing all over the Tower: Brecken, Jade and Rahim, as well as Spike and the large guy he knew was called Buckshot.

But then again, he had once again underestimated the hilarity of the situation. "So," he continued on, "why the hell is Dr. Zere here?"

Brecken, who was looking quite comfortable in the only armchair, replied. "He's an honorary member. He's a fucking badass once you get to know him."

Crane nodded, understanding. "One last question. Why do you get to sit in that armchair while the rest of us are on these?"

Spike leans over the armrest of the tiny red camping chair he was trying to sit on. "Whoever is voted to have the coolest Infected kill each meeting gets to sit in the armchair of honour, until the next meeting. Brecken's got it this week."

Jade snorted. "My kill was cooler." She turns to Crane. "I beheaded a Viral using a didgeridoo I found in the back of a thrift store."

Lounging on the armchair, Brecken laughed loudly. "I still won, didn't I?"

"Mine was better." Jade sniffed.

"Wait, what did you do to win, Brecken?" Crane asked.

He smiled proudly. "Last week, I killed a Biter by shoving an umbrella up it's -"

"Shut it, Brecken. Nobody wants to hear how that went."

"Crane and I do!"

"Please don't encourage him, Rahim. Be glad you were away last meeting and leave it like that."

"Well, I shoved it in _really_ deep, and then I opened it as hard and fast as I could. That thing was industrial grade and reinforced a whole ton, so you can probably guess what happened next."

"I can, and the mental image is now stuck in my head. Thanks for that." Crane sighed and massaged his temples. He was going to have to wash his eyes with bleach after this. Barely five minutes in, and he was already regretting coming to this.

"Man, that's disgusting," Rahim groaned.

"You asked for it." Jade retorted, gently whacking him with the back of her hand.

"Well, it was a good umbrella, so I was surprisingly free of zombie innards afterwards."

"Well, enjoy that nice armchair of yours for now, because I'm getting it this week."

Brecken leant back into the cushioning and gave her an overly smug look. "You just wait and see, Aldemir, the chair is mine."

\-----

"Okay, peasants." From the armchair of honour, Brecken made a hand gesture to indicate silence.

He was met with seven identical glares at his antics. Crane reclined in his chair and watched on silently, curious at the proceedings. Brecken continued, unfazed at the looks he was getting. "It is time for the fight for the armchair of honour. If you have a kill worthy of the chair, come forth."

Out of the corner of his eye, Crane could see Rahim rolling his eyes in an exaggerated manner at Brecken's dramatics.

"As the current occupant of the chair, I'll go first." Brecken stood and cleared his throat. "On Monday night, I left all my weapons in the tower, except for this awesome frying pan." He brandished a really battered frying pan from somewhere with a grin. "Rapunzel was onto something folks, this thing is deadly. For this week's feat, I killed twelve biters and polished off a Volatile with only a frying pan!"

Hearing this, Crane wanted to laugh. He wasn't the only one, given the chuckles coming from Spike and Rahim and the smile on the other's faces.

Spike finished cackling at his recount and crowed, "Oh yeah? I defeated a Volatile using a canister of spray paint two days ago!"

"Oh yeah? I once defeated a Volatile using a faulty flare." Brecken immediately shot back from his spot on the armchair.

Rahim leant forward in curiosity. "How in the world did you manage that?"

"Don't ask. Please." Brecken grimaced.

Rahim connected the dots after a second's pause. "What is it with you shoving things up zombie's butts?" he cried out. Crane snorted at his exasperated tone.

Jade slumped over the arm of her camping chair and facepalmed. "Maybe just stop asking Brecken questions in general, Rahim."

"It's not my fault Brecken has weird preferences!" Rahim whined, waving his hands in the air in indignation. At this, the majority of the group cracked up laughing. Jade looked like she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Brecken scowled and pointed a single finger at him. "Shut it Rahim, or mark my words, I will throw you out that window no matter how much Jade threatens me not to."

Rahim started protesting loudly, as the others laughed even harder.

"Wait a second," Crane paused once they'd finished laughing, thinking for a moment. "Rahim, how did you join? I thought you were just an instructor and Jade is crazy overprotective of you. I didn't think you'd go out of the Tower much, to be honest."

Spike grinned at him and motioned to Rahim with a flick of his hand. "Rahim here likes grenade launchers a little too much for his own good, which is why we keep him in the Tower as an instructor."

Jade sighed as she added to Spike's statement. "He's way too trigger happy. He always uses a whole ton of ammo and somehow manages to attract a whole ton of Virals every freaking time." With this, she glared at Rahim, who suddenly looked a little sheepish. Crane was willing to bet a couple of his swords that there was a good story behind that.

Rahim gave Crane an innocent look, raising his hands in mock surrender. "I simply find the usage of grenade launchers in general very fun. Very, very fun."

Jade gave her brother the stink eye. "No shit, Sherlock."

Crane smiled at the friendly banter.

Standing up, Buckshot went next. "Last Sunday, I did a little experiment of sorts. After hours of gruelling testing and the destruction of many poor speakers," he paused here for suspense, "I have come to the conclusion that the Infected hate Justin Bieber almost as much as you do, Jade. I did a field test the other day, and they almost tore the speaker playing it apart instead of just flocking to it like usual."

Jade pumped her fist. "I _knew_ it."

Dr. Zere turned to Buckshot with a glint in his eyes and beckoned to him. "Give me the data tomorrow in my trailer."

Brecken butted in, grinning widely, "Any stories this week, Doc?

Shaking his head, Dr Zere sighed in mock disappointment. "Nothing fun, unfortunately. I found an interesting anomaly in my data recently so I haven't been into the field this week. No Volatile attacks at night, either." He scratched his nose and looked over at Jade. "You should probably give Jade a turn now, she's been literally bouncing in her seat with excitement for the entirety of the meeting and it's annoying me."

Looking over, Crane had to agree that Dr. Zere was right, in that Jade seemed to be really looking forward to sharing. By the way she had acted earlier to Brecken, Crane knew that story was going to be good. That didn't stop him from underestimating how great the kill was, though.

Jade stood up with a shit-eating grin on her face. "Prepare to hand over the armchair, Brecken." He looked at her in doubt and chuckled a little.

"Yeah right. What did you do this time, Jade?"

"Three days ago, I dropped a vintage grand piano on a Biter."

Silence.

Crane almost choked on his spit because _holy shit_ , that is overkill and really badass.

With that, Rahim started laughing so hard it looked like he was going to burst a lung or something, and the rest of them followed, gasping for breath as they cracked up. Even the eternally calm Dr. Zere looked like he was trying to hold back his sniggers. Crane couldn't help but join in, chuckling with them.

It had been months since he had genuinely laughed, even before he was made to enter this hellhole. It felt like something had been lifted off of his chest. His first meeting wasn't even over just yet, but he was already endlessly glad he had joined this club. It was his first taste of normalcy in weeks after everything went to shit.

Once they had all calmed down, Brecken gave Jade a look that _said seriously? A piano of all things?_ He sighed in resignation and ran his hand through his hair. "Jesus fucking Christ, Jade. Can I at least ask why?"

She smirked at the look on his face. "I was in that safehouse - you know, the one in that big music store in the Old Town - and there was a single biter trying to get through the door."

Rahim butted in, still grinning. "Only one? A little overkill, don't you think? I mean, a mob or a Volatile is understandable, but a single Biter?"

"Yes, a single Biter," She fixed him with a deadpan look as he tried not to snort in laughter, "But hey, I was pretty sure it was going to attract a viral or two, so I decided to get rid of it."

"Using a third story window and a vintage grand piano."

"Exactly."

Crane stared at the banter. Then it clicked. "So you're the reason why there's that piano in the _middle of the fucking road_ to the south of that bazaar-like area in the Old Town?"

"Yes?"

"Are you also the reason the weed-whacker in the storage shed is covered in blood?"

"No, of course not, that was Brecken."

" _Jade!_ " he hissed. Clearing his throat, Brecken coughed, eager to change the subject. "And you, Crane, got any Infected-killing preferences and shit you'd like us to know about?"

Leaning back as far as he could on his tiny blue camping chair without falling off, Crane made eye contact with Brecken and said, "Well I, a man of _impeccable_ taste, prefer to drop-kick zombies off tall buildings."

"And uncontrollably giggle about it afterwards like a teenage girl around her crush." Rahim fired back.

"I do not."

"You do too," Jade elbowed him in the side jokingly, and he glared at her from the corner of his eye. "Brecken and Rahim can back me up here, as you left your radio on one time and we were all terribly confused at why the person on the other end would randomly start giggling after loud thumping noises."

"In my defence, there is something very funny about booting Infected from rooftops."

"Valid point."

"Hang on a moment," Brecken's brow creased as he looked over at Crane, "Was the impeccable tastes bit a personal dig about the butt thing?"

Crane raised an eyebrow. "You only realised that now?" he drawled.

"Fuck you, Crane, and fuck you too, Rahim."

"Hey!"

Crane couldn't help laughing at that. God, he was so glad he dropped that elevator on that Viral.

\-----

In the end, Jade was the undisputed owner of the armchair of honour. Death by grand piano was voted to be more awesome than death by frying pan.

Although Brecken strongly disagreed, he was overruled by the other club members and ended up sulking for the majority of the week until the next meeting.

The next day, life in the Tower had gone back to business as usual.

The sun rose on Thursday morning, and Crane strode out of the entrance and into the slums. Lena was running low on gauze and alcohol again, so she had asked him to track some down if he could. Also, some chocolate would be appreciated too, if he could find any. As one of the better runners they had, Crane was more than skilled enough to plunder whatever he could from the various shops and pharmacies of Old Town without being killed by Infected.

However, that wasn't his only plan. The best Infected kill of the week would soon belong to him, if he could pull off what he had in mind.

On Thursday, he scouted out possible locations for his plan once he had completed his normal errands and grabbed the things Lena had asked for, including a couple of chocolate bars he had found in someone's bedside table. Finding the parts he needed, calling in favours and the actual construction work took another four whole days, finishing on Monday afternoon. Testing took another day, and finally on Wednesday morning, he was ready. Just in time for the club meeting too.

In case this plan failed, he still had a backup. On Friday, he had used a brick to brain Infected manually, the entire day, simply because he could. Ha. Suckers. He knew he wouldn't win the armchair of honour with it, but hey, that was still pretty funny. He had overheard Rahim telling one of the other runners that Brecken had found a working harvester on the outskirts of Harran the day before, and damn, Crane would be lying if he said he wasn't a little jealous that he hadn't found it first.

But anyway, it was time to put his own plan into motion.

Crane stood on the roof of the broken-down bus across the river from Rais' Headquarters. Sheltered from view of his goons by the bus blocking the road, there lay was a crudely made giant wooden catapult made using the building materials he'd scavenged over the past week and other bits and pieces he'd picked up.

He wanted to cry a little when he thought of all the favours he'd called in from various survivors he'd helped during his time in this hellhole, but in the end, they'd all happily obliged when he'd explained what it was and what he wanted it for. Looking back, Crane realised now they were mainly thankful that he wasn't asking for food, money, medkits or some other precious resource they couldn't afford to give away in order to pay back their debt.

Anyway, Crane had a giant, armed catapult and according to his testing, a single pull of the rope he held could fling something pretty big a fair distance. To increase that, he'd set explosives under the catapult's bucket to really maximise lift-off velocity, which were connected to a detonator he held. It didn't take a genius to realise what he was planning to do with it. Rais had it coming.

Now, all that was left was to lure a Biter. Crane wanted to cackle a little at the thought. He spotted a particularly slow one that was close enough to him, and isolated from the others. _Perfect._

A well aimed pebble caught it's attention, and another one made it start ambling towards him, hands outstretched and groaning as most Biters do.

Slowly jogging around the Biter to control where it was walking, he lured it towards the modified arm of the catapult and into the bucket, which was made to be significantly flatter and larger than usual.

As it approached the desired destination, Crane moved even further away from the Infected, out of the possible blast zone. The Biter came to the catapult's bucket, and proceeded to nearly stumble over it in order to get to Crane, who was a distance away on the other side. Bless their simple minded stupidity and hunger for human flesh.

The Biter dragged a bloody hand over the wood and raised a knee to climb into the bucket. It was nearly halfway onto it now, and Crane felt he was nearly vibrating with excitement. _So close._ It raised its other leg up, and finally, the Biter was fully in the bucket. Reaching forward, it went to pull itself over the other side, but there was no way in hell Crane was going to let this opportunity pass.

_Now._

"And..." he yanked the rope with all his strength, releasing the potential force the winch held, and simultaneously detonated the primed explosives beneath the bucket with a resounding boom.

" _Sayo-fucking-nara_ , thanks for coming!" The catapult's arm _whipped_ forwards, and sent the Biter flying, up, up and away. It disappeared out of view as it flew over the bus and en route to Rais' headquarters.

Crane scrambled onto the roof of the bus as fast as he could to see if it hit the target, just in time for pandemonium to break out in Rais' courtyard. _Hell yeah._ He pumped the air with his fist, enjoying the feeling of success after so much effort. _Enjoy the raining Infected, Rais._

With that, Crane hightailed it out of there as fast as he could before they managed to link the catapult to him, chuckling all the while. With the press of another button on the detonator, the remnants of the catapult exploded behind him, taking out two more Biters that were attracted by the noise.

Jade had better enjoy that chair while she still had it, because it was going to be his _very soon._

\- EXTRA -

Brandishing his frying pan threateningly, Brecken stepped into the darkness beyond the safety of the Tower.

He quietly crossed the rooftops, grimacing as his steps caused the corrugated iron panels to creak beneath him. Approaching a lone Volatile, he readied his pan in his grip and promptly flinched as he stepped on the edge of one panel, causing a loud squeak. The Volatile he was stalking abruptly turned its head, and Brecken shivered a little as they made eye contact. Their mutilated faces never failed to put him off his dinner.

With a roar, the Volatile charged at him with the speed of a bullet train and the grace of a bull in a china shop and began to scale the side of the building rapidly.

Swearing in a very colourful manner, Brecken readied himself for a smackdown. He better get the armchair after this.

With a swing that would have made any cricketer proud he yelled, "Taste the... FRYING PAN!" and thonked the Volatile over the head as hard as he could, sending it to the ground, only for it to snarl and rush at him again.

Brecken stared at his tool of choice. "Huh." he said. He wasn't expecting it to work so well, to be honest.

In the end, the Volatile didn't stand a snowflake's chance in hell.

**Author's Note:**

> I refuse to admit that a club like this doesn't exist offscreen in the game.  
> Just the runners of the Tower hanging out and boasting about kills together one night a week, until it becomes a custom. It's not really a competition, but an excuse for some fun and stress relief. After all, they are stuck in a zombie apocalypse together.
> 
> Thanks for reading & don't forget to leave a kudos! :p


End file.
